DNA Helps unscramble the puzzles of ancestry
By Stephen Magagnini (Sacramento BEE-STAFF WRITER
Sunday Aug 03, 2003
Almost from the time he was old
enough to read the "whites only"
signs on department stores in Montgomery, Ala.,
Ulysses Moore has been on a quest.Where did I come from? he wondered.
He knnew he was more than just a
"colored" child of the segregated
South, that his legacy extended beyond
the slave ships that brought 12
million Africans across the Atlantic.
Was he descended from Shaka Zulu
or the great Mandinka warriors, or
the builders of the ancient world's
greatest library in Egypt?
In his teens, Moore began collecting
African art and reading every-thing he
could on Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia,
Nigeria and Ghana - the
West African nations that exported
most of the slaves.
But his mocha skin isn't as dark as
most West Africans, and his nose,
hips, face and shoulders aren't as
broad. "A lot of people from Africa
would tell me I looked a lot like East
African people." said Moore, a49yrs.
"Ethiopians would come up to me
and start speaking Amharic, one of
the main languages."
Mystified, Moore took a different
tack. Two months ago, he sent in a
sample of his DNA to African Ancestry,
one of a half dozen firms nation wide
that test DNA commercially to help
people learn more about where they
came from.
Moore, who works for the U.S. Army
in San Francisco teaching soldiers to use
lasers, is among the thousands of Americans
who are roots bunting with the help
of DNA testing. They include folks trying
to leam if they're part American Indian,
and European Americans hoping
to leam whether they're descendants of
Vikings, Celts - or in one case, heir to the
Portuguese throne.
Genealogy is now America's second
largest hobby behind gardening, and
DNA testing is genealogy's hottest new
tool. Best known for its use in criminal
eases and medical research, DNA is rewriting
human history by tracing the migration
of peoples tens of thousands of
years ago. It's also rewriting personal histories
by proving, or disproving, a person's direct lineage
- in some cases shaving years off old-fashioned roots
searches using the family tree.
The brave new world of DNA rootsquests
barely three years old sometimes, produces surprising results.
One adoptee from Berkeley learned she shared a common ancestor with the outlaw
Jesse James. A Catholic priest in New
Mexico discovered his DNA matches
that of most Jews, indicating his ancestors probably fled the
Spanish Inquisition. And a Jewish schoolteacher from
Oakland learned at least one of her forebears came out of China.
Others have learned, to their dismay,
that they're not sons or daughters of the
American Revolution, at least not genetically.
Somewhere along the line, there
was an adoption or indiscretion.

Currently DNA testing can tell you
only whether your genetic pattern
matches some of the more than 100,000
people, dead and alive, whose gene patterns
have been analyzed and logged by
scientists in laboratories worldwide.
If there's a match, that means you
share a common ancestor somewhere
along your mother's or father's direct
line - as in your father's father's father,
for example. The analysis doesn't tell
you when - it could be any time in the
last 15,000 years - and it doesn't account
for the thousands of people in between
who also are your ancestors.
What you get are some genetic leads
that are part of a much larger puzzle that
must be pieced together the old-fashioned way;
through census records,
birth and death certificates, family Bibles,
letters and oral histories.
The longing to know our origins is ingrained
in the American psyche, according to Bruce Jackson,
a Boston University geneticist who specializes in African
American roots.
"To be tied to something is the most
important component of our Americanism. We came from someplace else and
used what we brought with us to build this great nation,"
Jackson said.
"Like Maya Angelou says, 'No one can
know where he is going unless he knows
exactly where he has been and exactly
how he arrived at this present place.'"
For Jackson and thousands of other African Americans, genealogy is more
than a hobby: It's nothing less than a healing quest for identity.
Jackson compares his anguish to that of some adoptees who have no clue
about their biological roots. "My history
goes back thousands of years in Africa, but most of it has been blotted out,"
he said. "What holidays did my ancestors celebrate? What were their marriage customs?
Their politics? Their names? What were the great things they did, and the
things that aren't so great?"
Jackson has gone to West Africa to collect the DNA of bout 2,000 Africans. He
offers roots testing to African Americans and Caribbean blacks free of charge
through his nonprofit African American Roots Project.
"If African Americans can link ourselves to our nations of origin, we will be
more invested in the fate of Africa and could have a tremendous impact on its
future," he said.
Jackson traced his mother's DNA to the British Isles, and suspects one of his
ancestors was an indentured servant from Ireland who perhaps married a
freedman. Jackson said the testing confirms his family's oral history, about a
white matriarch in Virginia in the early 1800s.
But so far, Jackson hasn't been able to
narrow his father's roots to a tribe in Africa; the database isn't yet large enough.
Another African American geneticist, Rick Kittles of Howard University, says
he has a larger database - the DNA of, 10,000 Africans from 82 different tribes
and ethnic groups - and claims his firm, African Ancestry, can link about 85 per-
cent of African Americans with at least some of their ancestors.
One customer was Moore, the San Francisco laser weapons trainer, who in
May sent African Ancestry $349 and a swab containing DNA scraped from the
inside of his cheek.
Virtually every human cell has DNA,
which includes a full set of genetic instructions that determine traits such as
eye color, blood type and height.
There are two main types of DNA roots tests, which can cost anywhere
from $160 to upwards of $500. Women can trace their direct maternal lineage
by testing their mitochondriai DNA, about 16,500 pairs of genetic
information that pass down unchanged from mother to daughter to granddaughter.
Geneticists can analyze a small section of mitochondrial DNA to find patterns
based on ethnicity.
Men have mitochondrial DNA from their mothers, too. They can't pass it
down, but can use it to trace their maternal roots.

Men also have the option of tracing their father's line
through-the Y chromosome,
the male sex determinant passed from father to son.
Moore decided to trace his mother's lineage, which was more likely to
stretch back to Africa than his dad's; According to experts, nearly a third
of African Americans have a European male ancestor, often the result of couplings,
forced or otherwise, between white master
and their slaves.
A few weeks ago, Moore got the results;
He's a perfect match with the Turkana people
in East Africa.
In his collection of African art, he has
masks from Mali, spears from South Africa, pottery from Algeria and Morocco -
but nothing from the Turkana, who, he said, raise cattle, sheep and camels in
northwestern Kenya.
"I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, because for me, anyplace
Africa would have been a good place," said Moore.
Donald Black, a retired police officer who is now an investigator with the
Santa Clara County public guardian's office, had his DNA tested and learned he
was descended from the Yoruba of Nigeriaon his dad's side.
"When I opened the envelope and started to read, I almost cried because it
gave me a sense of wholeness," said Black, a63yrs. "It tells me we didn't start
here, my folks weren't always slaves, they didn't always have to step off the
sidewalk and say, 'Yes sir, no sir.' In Mali, Greeks and Romans sent their sons
to study at the feet of black scholars. ... folks like me."
Black plans to visit the Yoruba, known historically as fierce warriors,
craftsman and scholars, as soon as he can. "I've got to," he said. "Everybody
has to go from whence they came."

For those looking for their American Indian roots.
Trace Genetics of Davis, CA. has
assembled the largest collection of American Indian DNA - about 4,000 samples.
The founders, UC Davis graduates Jason Eshleman and Ripan Malhi, say they
can tell you whether you're linked to one of five broad American Indian groups.
They may even be able to tell you if you're Navajo, Chippewa, Choctaw,
Seminole or Cherokee, since members of those and other larger tribes are
in the database.
But individual tribes who hope to use DNA testing to determine membership
will be disappointed, Eshleman said.
"Tribes weren't isolated, they've inter-married. Without knowing who your
neighbors are genetically you can't tell if you're different from them,"

The existing database of DNA samples, while far from complete, is full of
surprises. Andi Jones, a 36-year-old Berkeley anthropologist who was adopted
as an infant, had her DNA tested by Trace Genetics and learned she shared a
maternal ancestor with the outlaw Jesse James, whose DNA had been tested to
prove he hadn't faked his death in 1882.
Alanya Snyder, a Jewish middle school teacher in Oakland, had her DNA
tested as a wedding present and discovered she matches people from central
Asia.
The news thrilled Snyder's mother Carel Bertram, a San Francisco State
professor with a lifelong love of Turkic art and culture. Bertram suspects she and
Snyder are descendants of the Khazars, a Turkic-speaking group that converted
to Judaism about A.D. 750 and later was conquered by the Kiev Rus, or early
Russians.
"Maybe there was this wonderful, Turkic-speaking Jewish woman," she
mused. "It's so enriching, something added to my life that I had not expected."
The rise of DNA roots testing has generated some unusual request.
"One woman wanted to prove she was related to the queen of Portugal and had
concocted a plan to break into the royal tomb and get a tooth," Malhi said. "We
try to get those people off the phone as quickly as possible."
Perhaps the fastest-growing segment of the DNA roots market are folks with
the same last name who wonder if they're related.
Jim Rader of Rancho Cordova, for example compiled a database of 30,000
Raders, Roders and Rotters. Only four of those agreed to DNA testing, but one
was a perfect match. Rader believes they're both descended from Casper Rotter.
who left Europe for Philadelphia in 1750.
Despite the nuggets unearthed by DNA roots hunters, people
must be careful not to read too much into the results,
said Stanford law and genetics professor Hank Greely. While a person may match
78 percent of the Yruba in the existing database, he may be a closer match with
another tribe whose DNA hasn't yet been tested.
So far, most DNA roots quest, rather than clarifying a person's background,
tend to blur lines of race and ethnicity.
"Most of us are generally the result of some sort of mixing of peoples,
so in effect this science is starting to debunk the idea of pure anything,"
said Bennett Greenspan, who in the year 2000 started
DNA,
the largest commercial roots-testing firm in the country.
Geneticists now believe they can trace all modern humans to a man and
woman who lived in southern Africa about 130,000 years ago, Eshleman said.
"There's a mother and a father of us all - everyone on Earth can trace their
maternal or paternal lineage to them, and their offspring gradually populated
the World. We're so closely related that there's no good reason to split up the
human race into all these categories."
The Bee's Stephen Magagnini can be reached at
(916) 321-1072 or

If you want your project to be listed in one not found on this list,
send me the information and I would be happy to post it.
If you don't find the name your are
looking for alphabetically. There are some large scale projects
that have many different surnames being tested.
Here is the key to the labs:
BYU: Brigham Young University (special project)
FTDNA: Family Tree DNA
GTDNA: GeneTree DNA
KUL: Katholieke Univ. Leuven, Belgium
OA: Oxford Ancestors
UCL: Univ. College of London
UL: Univ. of Leicester
RG: Relative Genetics
TC: Trinity College, Dublin